Metabolic Pharmaceuticals (ASX:MBP) has reported a half-year after-tax loss of AUD$6.3, up from $4.2 million in the corresponding period in 2003. That included $6.1 million of expenditure on research and development, up from $5.0 million in 2003. The company's statement of cash flows reveals it took a $500,000 stake in Neuren Pharmaceuticals' (ASX:NEU) IPO earlier this month. Metabolic has also contracted Neuren to conduct in vitro experiments to provide supporting data on the biochemistry of its growth hormone obesity drug AOD9604. [ + ]

Mayne Group will book a AUD$5 million one-off charge in its first-half results after a UK appeal court ruled its version of the cancer drug epirubicin infringed a patent on the original drug. [ + ]

With considerable help from Affymetrix offshoot Perlegen Sciences, the International HapMap Consortium has announced it will build a more detailed map of human genomic variation than originally anticipated. [ + ]

Melbourne-based business development and seed finance group Biocomm Services has broadened its reach internationally with the announcement that Tokyo biotech company Locomogene would be the company's first Japanese client. [ + ]

Just over half a million in undelivered grant funding has left a hole in Alchemia's (ASX:ACL) accounts, with the company announcing a net loss after tax for the half-year of AUD$4.6 million, compared to $2.7 million in the previous corresponding period. [ + ]

Sydney probiotics manufacturer VRI BioMedical has announced a deal with Australia's largest vegetarian food company, Sanitarium, to develop a range of health-promoting functional foods around its probiotic technology. [ + ]

Melbourne gene-testing company Genetic Technologies (ASX:GTG, US OTC:GNTLY) has still not resolved its patent-infringement dispute with US-based Applera Corporation, despite a second round of mediation. [ + ]

A senior Biotechnology Australia bureaucrat has been grilled in a senate estimates committee by conservative Tasmanian independent senator Brian Harradine about the federal agency's attitude towards human embryonic stem cells. [ + ]

The Spectro Inc Spectroil M/F is to be supplied for the newly commissioned Queen Mary II.

As the next phase of DTI’s Measurements for Biotechnology (MfB) program to 2007 gets underway, a large DNA microarray dataset generated by an LGC-led consortium during the first phase is now freely available online at ArrayExpress, a public repository managed by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI).

The management changes at RNAi player Benitec (ASX:BLT) continued yesterday, with the announcement that company secretary Gary Taylor had resigned as a director of the company. Taylor will remain company secretary. [ + ]

BresaGen (ASX:BGN) has obtained a non-exclusive license enabling technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the production of proteins and peptides in bacteria. [ + ]

Researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) have unravelled some of the interactions between pro-survival and pro-apoptotic proteins, providing clues to the regulatory mechanisms that govern apoptosis. [ + ]

Peptech Animal Health, a subsidiary of Peptech (ASX:PTD), has successfully completed trials of a new formulation of its dog contraceptive Suprelorin which suppresses fertility in male dogs for at least 12 months. [ + ]

Researchers at the Monash Institute of Medical Research and Genetics Australia Co-operative have cloned a cow using the technique of serial nuclear transfer. [ + ]